Ath. A God, who watched over Sparta, seeing into the future, gave you two
families of kings instead of one; and thus brought you more within the limits
of moderation. In the next place, some human wisdom mingled with divine power,
observing that the constitution of your government was still feverish and
excited, tempered your inborn strength and pride of birth with the moderation
which comes of age, making the power of your twenty - eight elders equal with
that of the kings in the most important matters. But your third saviour,
perceiving that your government was still swelling and foaming, and desirous
to impose a curb upon it, instituted the Ephors, whose power he made to
resemble that of magistrates elected by lot; and by this arrangement the
kingly office, being compounded of the right elements and duly moderated, was
preserved, and was the means of preserving all the rest. Since, if there had
been only the original legislators, Temenus, Cresphontes, and their
contemporaries, as far as they were concerned not even the portion of
Aristodemus would have been preserved; for they had no proper experience in
legislation, or they would surely not have imagined that oaths would moderate
a youthful spirit invested with a power which might be converted into a
tyranny. Now that God has instructed us what sort of government would have
been or will be lasting, there is no wisdom, as I have already said, in
judging after the event; there is no difficulty in learning from an example
which has already occurred. But if any one could have foreseen all this at the
time, and had been able to moderate the government of the three kingdoms and
unite them into one, he might have saved all the excellent institutions which
were then conceived; and no Persian or any other armament would have dared to
attack us, or would have regarded Hellas as a power to be despised.